Amoxicillin degradation with and without high frequency ultrasound waves of 2.4 MHz has been investigated. The concentration of amoxicillin was selected to be similar to that of outlet wastewater effluent concentration in pharmaceutical industry namely 50 and 100 ppm. The application of ultrasound waves together with the addition of hydrogen peroxide H2O2 increased the rate of degradation of antibiotic amoxicillin. The doses of H2O2 used were 5, 2, 1, and 0.1 ml in a solution of 50 ml of amoxicillin. The study showed that ultrasound waves and H2O2 had improved amoxicillin degradation. The ultrasound has improved the degradation rate more than two times in comparison to amoxicillin solution without ultrasound waves. This degradation rate has been achieved within 90 minutes.

Thermogravimetric analysis combined with a mass spectroscopy detector was used to study the thermal stability of solid materials earmarked for processing by thermal desorption (for example during the amelioration of environmental damage). The objective of the study was to verify the applicability of thermogravimetric analysis as a simple and fast tool capable of providing basic information about the behavior of a particular solid material during its heating to a given temperature. Samples of materials representing the spectrum of solids customarily treated during environmental remediation (soils, bricks, and concrete) were used as the model solid matrices. The measurements demonstrated a high informative power of thermogravimetric analysis, which may help predict many technologically important aspects of the thermal desorption process.

Onsite rainwater harvesting is an inexpensive water source for indoor use; it is also a sustainable water management practice, since it may contribute to the reduction of runoff volume and peaks, and to the control of non-point source pollution. The aim of this paper is to provide a method for sizing rainwater harvesting tanks based on the local daily rainfall record, the served family size, the roof collection area, the roof type, the in-house water uses, and other factors. Various methods used worldwide are presented and compared. The comparative application of these methods is made using a daily rainfall record from a meteorological station near Kimmeria Village in Xanthi, Northeast Greece. Based on the proposed method here, the optimum tank size is computed by allowing excess water to overflow and setting to zero the use of the public water supply; the method may result in reduced tank sizes compared to other methods tested.

The assessment of the air quality of indoor environment where people usually spend extended time periods, especially for sensitive population groups such as patients during their hospitalization, is of major importance. Ensuring a safe level of air quality in these indoor environment serves as an amelioration factor for human health not only for the often habitués of those indoors places, but also for the working personnel that spend more than 90% of their time indoors. In that aspect the concentration of coarse (PM10) and fine (PM2.5, PM1.0) particulate matter was measured in two Intensive Care Units (ICU), with different spatial and trespassing characteristics, of the Democritus University Hospital situated at Alexandroupolis, Greece. The measurements were conducted with the application of two portable aerosol monitoring equipment (TSI DustTrak 8520 and Grimm 107).

The results indicated that the 24-h average concentrations were below the indicative limits proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) (50 and 25 μg m-3 for PM10 and PM2.5 respectively). Relatively elevated instant concentration levels (>100 μg m-3) were also recorded during specific activities and in conjunction with the temporal variation of the observed concentration levels raised questions regarding the side effects of cleaning activities.

The urban planning, the buildings and covering materials of all surfaces, the distance between adjacent constructions, the height and the orientation of the buildings are some of the factors which affect the sustainable conditions in the city.

This paper presents a project that aims at investigating the influence of urban developments in microclimatic conditions. The purpose of the research is to investigate how the characteristics of built environment contribute the microclimatic conditions. The investigation was carried out in the urban center of Thessaloniki, Greece The urban geometry, the position and the height of the building inside the urban canyon, the orientation are factors that influence the surface temperature and microclimatic conditions (air temperature, wind speed, wind direction). The results of the investigation could contribute at the urban planning and the sustainable development of the contemporary cities.

This paper summarises the results of a survey carried out amongst the student population of one of the largest Greek Technological Educational Institutes. It explores attitudes toward the environment in general and then, more specifically, toward global warming and global warming-mitigation technologies. It also explores student understanding of sources of carbon dioxide and climate change-mitigation technologies, such as carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). Further, it analyses responses to questions about willingness of respondents to pay to solve global warming. The data was collected in October and November of 2011 using a structured questionnaire which was first formulated in English and then translated into Greek. The analysis was performed using the statistical package SPSS v17.0 and focused on descriptive statistics, in order to compare the average ratings for the different statements.

The present study concludes that university students in Greece are overwhelmingly positively disposed towards the environment with the majority of respondents believing that protecting the environment should have priority over economic considerations. Students also view the effects of global warming as serious enough to warrant action and state their belief that the current generation should meet its own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. Moreover, the majority of the participants are against the development of nuclear energy, favoring RES (solar wind and bioenergy), and energy conservation technologies. However, the study has also identified a lack of understanding in regards to sources of carbon dioxide. The majority of the respondents do not seem to know that oceans act as sinks of CO2 emissions or that the housing stock is a significant contributor to this problem.

This paper deals with the impacts of the current economic crisis on the temporal variation of urban traffic (during 2008-11) and consequently, the impacts on the urban air pollutant levels using as case study the city of Thessaloniki, Greece.

The important temporal variations of the main economic indicators like the annual decreasing trend of the gross domestic product (GDP), the continuous decrease of wages and the labor cost index, the annual increase of unemployment and hence, the decreasing trend of consumption and domestic demand during the current recession period in Greece affect the vehicle traffic.

A considerable decreasing trend of vehicle traffic volume has been observed in all examined intersections of Thessaloniki urban area. The highest temporal decrease of traffic volume is occurred in the morning hours.

The traffic volume decrease determines decisively the concentrations of urban air pollutants and especially, the concentrations of NO2 (nitrogen dioxide), which has mainly traffic emissions origin and the concentrations of PM10 (suspended particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm), which has mainly diesel cars emissions origin.

The correlation between traffic and air pollution decreasing trend shows that the air pollutant concentrations decrease is more significant in relation to the traffic decrease due to the fact that, even a small traffic decrease leads to a significant amelioration of the traffic conditions, which lead to significant lower car emissions and therefore, to significant lower pollutant concentrations in the air of the urban area.

The economic crisis did not lead to an increase of the public transport use. It seems that, the traffic decrease of the passenger cars and taxis is due to the trips decrease because of unemployment, the trips decrease connected to lost work positions and the elastic importance trips decrease (shopping, entertainment, etc) during 2008-11.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing interest in the prognosis of maximum surface ozone concentrations due to the adverse effects on human health, animal population, agricultural productivity and forestry. The present study deals with the development and application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models in predicting the maximum daily surface ozone concentration in several locations within the greater Athens area (GAA), 24-hours in advance. Meteorological and air pollution data during the period 2001 to 2005 were provided by the network of the Hellenic Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change. Hourly values of barometric pressure and total solar irradiance for the same period have been recorded by the National Observatory of Athens. A training data set for the ANN prognostic model was generated by employing the superposed epoch analysis.

The evaluation of the performance of the developed model, using appropriate statistical indices, clearly indicates that the risk of surface ozone values exceeding the European Union (EU) threshold for human health protection can be successfully predicted. This suggests that the proposed ANN model can be used to issue warnings for the general public and especially certain sensitive groups of the population.

Simultaneous PM10 and PM2.5 sampling was conducted for a six months period, at two sites of different characteristics. The first site was located in an urban background location in the North-Eastern part of GAA, affected by primary emission sources and particle transport from other parts of the GAA basin. The second site was located in central Athens, at a busy roadway, affected by heavy traffic-related and commercial activities. Additionally, continuous field measurements of PM fractions were also performed using direct-reading monitor in parallel with gravimetric samplers. The mean PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations for the sampling period were 26.2 and 13.7μg m-3 and 40.1 and 22.8 μg m-3 for ZOG and ARI, respectively. The PM2.5/PM10 ratio found 0.52 and 0.57 for ZOG and ARI, respectively. The coefficient of variation calculated equal to 0.40 for both fractions. Additionally, the weekday/weekend discernment of the particulate concentration levels for each site display different characteristics of the emission sources and composition, while the diurnal distribution of particulate levels demonstrated the dependence of the PM levels on anthropogenic activities and habits.

Both the local meteorological conditions and the air mass history indicating long-range atmospheric transport of particles are significant parameters that influence the levels of PM.

Due to the fact that water systems belong to critical infrastructure, diverse methods of its management assessment during crisis situations are applied. In these methods both technical aspects and human factors, that have an impact on safety of water supply to the recipient, are considered. Also assessment tools for water supply were applied for failure assessment in the water supply system (WSS) management. The safety functioning of WSS is associated with analysis of relations between threats, reducing the frequency of their appearing, and, if threats appear, with the identification of their causes and reducing their negative consequences. Undesirable events are the result of phenomena independent from the human will, as well as those related to human activity, that in a significant way influence the WSS functioning. Crisis situations that are affected by such undesirable events having nonrandom (rare events do not have the statistical stability), but also not-determined character, demand specific and interdisciplinary research methods.